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The Secrets Of Happiness In The Legal Field

Recent findings from a long-term survey of attorneys' careers finds that "[m]oney and prestige aren’t key to career satisfaction. Instead, work satisfaction is more closely related to the law grads’ perceptions of the social value of their work and the quality of their relations with co-workers and superiors, according to the study author, University of Michigan law professor David Chambers."

From the abstract of the paper, the authors note that "on the whole, women practitioners are somewhat more satisfied than men – since it appears that, in general, women place a higher priority than men finding employment in settings where the work (as they view it) has comparatively high social value and where they are likely to have especially good relations with coworkers."

It also appears that the longer attorneys practice, the more satisfied they are with their careers. "With just a few exceptions, the longer lawyers had been out of law school, the more satisfied they were overall with their careers. At the extremes, 83 percent of those who graduated 45 years before, but only 46 percent of five-year grads, reported themselves quite positive overall. The finding is consistent with research finding that older workers in general, and older lawyers in particular, are more satisfied than younger workers and lawyers."

So the secrets of a happy legal career are 1) find social value in your work, 2) get along with your coworkers and superiors, 3) be a woman, and 4) practice for a long period of time.

In all seriousness, these are good things for new attorneys to consider. Try to find work that has social value (even if you make less money). It may be rough in the early years, but the longer you keep at it, the happier you'll be. And be pleasant at work and get along with the people that you have to spend a large majority of your life with.

The current version of Standard 601(3)(a) was developed during the Comprehensive Review as a method of involving a law library in the process of strategic planning required of a law school. It was envisioned that the planning and assessment taking place for a law school (under what was then Standard 203) would incorporate the work done by the library under this new Standard. To ensure that incorporation, it was decided that a written assessment should be completed by the library. However, when the requirement for strategic planning for a law school was removed during a later phase of the Comprehensive Review, no change was made to the new Standard 601. As a result, the library community has been left…

Law libraries are in the information business. To act as superior guides to this information, we must also be in the people business. We must be concerned with the people who seek our information. And we must be concerned with the people who guide those seekers to the information (i.e., our staff).

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Given these challenges, how do we motivate our staff to be the very best guides to our information?

To that end, there was an enlightening program at the AALL Annual Conference in 2013 t…

As we further consider how to train future lawyers for the Algorithmic Society and develop the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning that will define smartness in this new age, law schools must reach beyond their storied walls.

In law, we must got beyond talking about algorithmic implications to actually help shape algorithmic performance. We need lawyers and programmers to work together to create a sound "machine learning corpus." There's potential for an entirely new subfield to emerge if given the right support. With many law school attached to major research universities, it's a great place to start this cross-pollination and interdisciplinary work.

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